Crude oil production in Kazakhstan, which is part of the OPEC+ output deal, plunged by 13% in August from July due to regular maintenance at one giant field and an unplanned halt at another huge oilfield, Reuters reported on Monday, quoting two sources with knowledge of daily production data.
Excluding condensate, oil production in Kazakhstan dropped to 1.196 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, down from 1.378 million bpd, according to the data cited by Reuters sources.
In early August, the offshore oilfield Kashagan in Kazakhstan, which pumps more than 300,000 bpd, was shut down after a gas leak was detected on the site.
A few days later, the field operator said that it would partially restart production, and upon completion of repairs and integrity verification, full production would be restored at the facility.
Kazakhstan has also seen reduced volumes of oil exports over the past weeks.
Oil exports from Kazakhstan via the Black Sea terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) were expected to face at least a month of reduced shipments and disrupted loading schedules due to urgent repairs needed at two of the terminal's three Single Point Moorings, the consortium said at the end of August.
CPC said that Single Point Moorings (SPM) 1 and 2 are temporarily out of service. Earlier in August, while performing scheduled maintenance on SPM-1 and SPM-2, divers discovered cracks in subsea hose attachments to buoyancy tanks, the consortium said. The integrity of the equipment remains intact, and there is no threat to the flora and fauna of the Black Sea, CPC added.
The 1,500-km CPC pipeline from the giant Kazakh oilfields in the Caspian Sea to Novorossiysk, on the Russian Black Sea coast, moves over two-thirds of all Kazakhstan export oil along with crude from Russian fields, including those in the Caspian region.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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